The Last Goodbye
by InsertImaginativeNameHere
Summary: Sometime during/after the last few issues of Hellblazer, Chas is coming to terms with what happened. VERY HAPPY NO I'M NOT BEING SARCASTIC guys I can't stop being sarcastic.


He was dead. As in, not alive and wandering aimlessly around somewhere, only to turn up a couple of months later, but dead, as in actually physically dead. When he'd said he had five days left, Chas had assumed he was talking shit again, humoured him but had never thought it was actually going to happened. Hadn't he had similar things before? Had anything ever come of them? No. Because John Constantine would always survive, pull some trick out of his sleeve, then forget to tell you he wasn't dead until you'd mourned and were literally sat at his funeral. Someone would call you, tell you he was dead, and not even a minute later he'd ring you demanding a lift. You got used to it. He was never dead, that was certain, no matter what, Constantine would be there, wearing _that_ coat, smoking _those_ cigarettes, unchanging in the face of everything. Constant.

And they expected Chas to believe he was dead? Not bloody likely.

"I'm sorry Chas," Epiphany yelled down the phone. "Don't you think I wish things had gone differently?"

"No," Chas shook his head violently. "Where's the body? If there ain't a body, he ain't dead, you hear me? He's not- he's not _dead_."

"I'm holding his body right now," John's wife - now there was a surreal sentence, there was a time when death would have been more likely - hissed tearfully. She believed what she'd seen then. But what she'd seen was wrong. Constantine wasn't dead. He would wriggle his way out of this somehow. Somehow. "It's definitely him. He - he died in my arms."

Rubbish. What a load of bollocks. Not true. It wasn't - couldn't be. Doubt filled the cabbie's mind, the conversation he'd had with Constantine only a few days ago running over and over in his mind. Five days left to live. And he hadn't been trying to get out of it. What if - well, there was only a tiny chance this was the case, barely worth consideration at all - what if it had actually happened? Unlikely but...Chas' blood ran cold. He shook the thought off. John was alive. He'd probably get a call now, explaining that some sort of shapeshifting kind of demonic possessed ghost of an evil child monster thingy had attempted to steal his life or eat a baby or attempt to impregnate the nearest living being or, or, or _something._ And then he'd bluffed it with his usual, maybe tricked it into offing itself so it only looked like he was dead now but oh no John Constantine was too clever to be dead, so, you know, it wasn't at all concerning as Chas drove like mad through the surprisingly quiet streets, swearing at occasional red lights, weighing up the odds of Constantine being permanently deceased. Becoming more and more doubtful, and so persuading himself he was wrong, denying that sinking feeling inside. It was John's demonic rapist twin. A, a mind control creature was messing with their heads. There was an innocent explanation for this.

Pulling into the street where the shitty, hideous apartment block John and Epiphany lived was, there was already an ambulance there. A growing sense of dread rushed over Chas. Innocent explanation. Not dead, not dead, not-

And there was his body, being wheeled away. No. Not his body. Someone else's. Anyone else's. Chas lept from the taxi and tore his way over, shoving a paramedic out of the way. He heard them complain, then he heard Epiphany say 'he's his best friend' and they let him through. He stared down at the corpse of his oldest friend, his mind denying what he saw, trying his hardest to think of some way out.

"It's not him! Doesn't even look like him!" If he said that enough times, he might even have started to believe it. "If it's him, where's his coat then? Doesn't even look like him…" he trailed off as he saw Epiphany unfold the long, tattered raincoat Constantine always wore, for more years than Chas could recall. It was covered in blood. She was covered in blood too. Chas made himself look back to the body. "'s not him." he murmured one last time, quietly insistent, as he stared at that face, the face he had hated many times, cursed and wished death upon. Now death had come and he wasn't totally lying to himself when he said that face was unfamiliar. It didn't look like John Constantine. In death, he was peaceful, lines across his forehead softer, scars less visible etched into his skin. A different man. There was no arrogant smirk, no cunning glint in those cold, dead, empty eyes, no tension or fear or paranoia.

"We're sorry," one of the paramedics replied, putting a hand on the cabbie's shoulder. Chas shook him off angrily.

"You can piss off!" he stabbed him in the chest with an accusing finger "He's _not_ dead! He's never been dead before. He went to Hell - MORE THAN ONCE -and he ALWAYS came back so if you want to stand there and tell me he's fucking dead I'm not having it. No. No…"

He wasn't sure how long he stood there for after they took the body away. He wasn't sure when he took the coat from Epiphany and ran it over in his hands, staring at it through overflowing eyes. By the time Renee arrived, he was slumped by the entrance to the block of flats in full-on fucking tears, not even trying to disguise the raw, unadulterated grief coursing through his veins.

"He - he's dead Renee. Properly dead. He's gone."

"I know," Renee whispered and she sounded almost sad. Funny, that. She hated John. Always had, always would. It was one of the facts of life. Like 'Constantine's-never-really-dead' had been, right up until the moment when it wasn't. "I know I never liked him and I used to wish you'd have the sense to leave him behind. Sometimes I thought I wished him dead. If I could take some the things I'd said back-"

"You'd have said them anyway," Chas pointed out bitterly. "You and him, neither of you were much good at keeping your mouths shut. You thought he was a right bastard and he thought-"

"He thought I was right."

"I was going to say he thought you were a moody cow," Chas tried to smile grimly, to make a joke despite the pain, but he was no John Constantine when it came to these things. He failed. "His words, not mine." Though they had, at various points, been his words exactly. Perfect husband he was not.

Renee nodded and said nothing, embracing her husband. The world kept right on turning.

And Constantine was dead.

The funeral was a quiet affair. Chas was still half-expecting Constantine to sneak in at the end of the eulogies, like last time, all those years ago. Only half the attendants there were already pushing up the daisies, weren't they, thanks to the endless stream of shit Constantine had dragged them through. The survivors, such as they were, were split into two groups: those who hated him and were glad he was dead; and about five other people, the remnants of his family and Chas himself. Awkward, really.

Throughout the service, he couldn't stop crying, made no secret of it. No-one would look down on him for it, and if they did he'd thump them one. Didn't they get it? Constantine, yeah, that arsehole, John Constantine was dead. Gone. No more 3AM phonecalls like 'hello mate I need a lift to the sodding South Pole' or some shit like that. No more dragging Chas into one of his routine, almost annual, pissing on Hell competitions or whatever he called them. After a dull day at work, he couldn't count on a suicide deathmurder plague livening everything up the way it used to. And if, on the off chance, there was a suicide deathmurder plague, who was going to stop it?

Obviously, there were plus-sides - not having to get up at 3AM to ferry that stupid bastard half-way across the country was one of them. Chas had offered to teach him to drive before but Constantine had always refused. Because he didn't want to lose his excuse for being around Chas, didn't want to lose his only remaining friend? Yeah, that'd be it. That and it involved staying sober longer enough to pass the test, doing what instructors, the government and the fucking highway code told him to, all authority figures which meant John would have preferred to tell them where to shove off...things that incompetent, selfish, _dead_ idiot would rather opt out of - would rather _have_ opted out of, while he was alive. Chas kept having to remind himself.

 _He's dead. Dead. About to go up in flames like one of his silk cuts._ Hardly a week ago, it had seemed like he would somehow outlive them all, a screw you to both Hell and the medical profession as a whole. Just thinking about it, picturing the last Constantine smile he'd ever seen, hearing his phone ring earlier and thinking it had to be him back from the grave, or hearing the creak of the door and turning to see no one, just the wind, that was enough to set him off again. He still didn't want to believe it. It didn't make any sense. Possessed trenchcoats, contagious empathy, the existence of Heaven and Hell, now that Chas could accept wholeheartedly. They made a bizarre sort of sense, after a while. This didn't. This couldn't be it.

Chas wept all through the cremation, clutching his wife's hand tightly as he waited. Waited for the pain to go away.

If it ever would.

It was after the funeral that things finally started to make sense again. Chas nearly walloped that weird nephew of John's for disrespecting his memory. Shagging Epiphany? That was the kind of low blow John would have done. Sometimes, Finn was just too similar for it to be comfortable. He was a doctor, a hero, a good person, whatever, but he was also a Constantine. Being an arsehole was in the blood.

Not long after, actually pretty immediately really, he saw Constantine's ghost. It scared the shit out of him, but it _made sense._ If anyone was going to linger around after death, it was him. He wasn't gone. Wasn't suffering in Hell like he'd always said he deserved. No, he'd outwitted them all, once again he'd come out on top. There he went, John Constantine, and then that was that.

And everything made sense again, and Chas knew somehow it was all going to be okay.

John fucking Constantine.

Rest in peace and goodbye.

 _Somewhere, a man in a trenchcoat is lighting a cigarette. Chas doesn't - can't - know this. Because he's over John Constantine. No need to go dragging the past back up, is there?_

 _Is there?_


End file.
